The Persona Problem
How would you ensure you keep ambiguity at bay while bucketing your user personae?
Over building products, millions of dollars have got flushed down the drain owing to the research lacking / being undercooked, as it could result in a half-baked product at best, leaving it orphaned post release with nobody / none of the targeted user groups showing any interest in it, confirmed by the waning metrics over those campaigns ultimately hitting adoption hard & deep.
When here is no doubt that such a problem could have its root cause in research, the exact place, the epicenter of the problem so to speak could be the BUKETNG OF THE USER PERSONA. Building a user persona is a crucial activity often undertaken post research, in fact it could also go on to serve as a metric to measure the strength of the research, a lagging indicator alright but nonetheless effective still given how it could save one from the disaster of building for a non-existent market.
Ever dealt with ambiguity post bucketing your user personae?
Well. Picture this for an example.
“Mr. X who is busy with his 9-5 job needs help in managing his finances”
Although for some this could still qualify as a good user persona as it does represent a sample space (/ set of people), it would fall terribly short if it were to be someone from the Fintech domain.
Why, you ask? Here are a few possible reasons:
Mr. X and his needs look entirely generic and could have a varied set of goals making it unclear what the end goal / the main purpose here is
The term “finances” could look fleeting & have a really diverse net of products that could qualify, leaving one in the lurk as for the exact problem area that one ought to be focusing on
The magnitude of help Mr. X needs seems totally unclear here, is it to do with making sound financial decisions / does he need an outright solution to manage all finances?
What’s the cadence that Mr. X would be needing this help? Is it going to be daily / weekly affair or short-term / long-term one?
Get a hang of the ambiguity there?
Well. The problem here is real & in some places I have witnessed how that developed into an issue so grotesque that sucked up all time & money getting teams nowhere close to the outcomes when there is absolutely no shortage over their effort. That’s the ambiguity kicking in which ought to be nipped in the bud as early as possible.
Ambiguity in a user persona is the unclear / vague mapping, muddled representation of the needs of a targeted user group that could be open to multiple interpretations leading to many a misunderstanding within the teams given inaccurate & incomplete assumptions, making it almost impossible to reach a workable decision strategically. A sure recipe for failure indeed.
Ambiguity in building user personas could lead to many consequences, some major ones are:
1. Typecasting
Given how the personas are now fed on limited data or incorrect assumptions it could possibly point to an unusually massive sample space alright. But that also leave one lurking about for answers to a lot of unanswered questions. Generalization thereof, would get one to a generic / vague idea of a user’s need, at best given how the people involved in sense-making have possibly condoned the complexity / missed out on the nuances of the sample space.
2. Misinterpretation
With no clarity over the persona the inherent needs of the user groups are left to anyone’s guess. And that could lead to team members reaching their own conclusions about the user’s needs & vague definition of the problem. Blimey, how can one even get to define the needs clearly when the groups of people they are targeting seem to be totally foggy.
3. Non-Strategy
The results are only as good as the data. If there’s a flaw in the data & one fails to filter it out in the process of skimming, the result (both intermittent & end) would most surely end up being substandard. Formulating a workable strategy could feel like it is quite a task, let alone pegging the strategy strongly over that Strategy Spectrum.
Not to mention, one is already set themselves up well for failure here irrespective of how well they / their teams tend to write those user stories / build those wireframes en route to building the product.
Representing this mathematically, assume there are 7 properties that stand for the individual traits of the user persona.
The ideal & best result possible here ought to be a disjoint set when you plot a VENN between the individual personas that you are defining, at least for the most significant traits / properties, like so:
NOTE: The properties listed here are sorted based on the size, the most significant appearing on top & prominently bigger, eventually getting shorter as one traverses down that scale.
Given this scenario, it would now be pretty straightforward to move ahead as the goal of a given persona would now be unambiguously defined by those very properties (/traits) listed under them, leading to a better definition & also a clear breakdown of the steps needed to get there, like small milestones leading to the major end-goal.
Post mapping them traits out to your persona, if you happen to land something like so…:
That could end up working out fine given how the [Prop 4] isn’t really a significant trait as for both those personae.
But, whatever you do, beware of persona that carry common traits with the VENN looking like this:
All the major traits [PROP-01], [PROP-06], [PROP-02] representing the 2 personae are common & the clash would certainly come in the way of your product build. Really, what are you going to build first & for whom?
Over tackling these ambiguities while building personas, 2 primary rules apply:
RULE1: Conduct Nuanced Research
Pin on conducting deep & thorough research that covers all the nuances, all the little details so that nothing gets missed out on. Re-work through the research by personally gathering a small number of people from each of the qualifying groups representing the persona, addressing each of those traits [PROP 1-n] to reestablish relevance & significance.
RULE 2: Law of Inclusivity
When you make sure the personas you build do represent a wide range of user groups and perspectives, make it quintessential to demarcate their traits [PROP 1-n] based on the problem you are trying to solve & the end goal your leadership / org. is after given that point in time. In fact, starting off with the goal & then sliding into the problem to strategize over best initiatives to focus on would be the best possible approach.